Class Debates in Intermediate Microeconomics: Social Economics and Pluralist Perspectives

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of class debates in an intermediate-level microeconomics course to introduce early to mid-career undergraduate students to socially embedded and pluralist perspectives, political-economic processes, and policy analyses. Using data from three semesters of class debates in an intermediate microeconomics course, we argue that this activity is a beneficial way to stimulate student interest in social economics, especially in the ethical, political economy, and economic justice aspects of economics and policy. We carried out three allied activities: participation in the debate, a learning self-assessment survey, and a five-page memo providing a balanced analysis of the policy conundrums surrounding the issue under discussion. We discuss three aspects of these class debates relevant to social economists: student attention to processes of knowledge construction, cognizance of power in socioeconomic life, and engagement with economic justice and ethics.     

‘Economics with Training Wheels’: Using Blogs in Teaching and Assessing Introductory Economics

Blogs provide a dynamic interactive medium for online discussion, consistent with communal constructivist pedagogy. The author of this article describes and evaluates a blog assignment used in the teaching and assessment of a small (40–60 students) introductory economics course. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected across four semesters, students’ participation in the blog assignment is found to be associated with student ability, gender, and student perceptions of the blog. Importantly, students with past economics experience do not appear to crowd out novice economics students. Student performance is positively associated with the quality of their blog participation after controlling for student ability, suggesting that a focus on quality of student engagement could further improve learning outcomes. Students generally report overall positive experiences with the blog assignment.     

A Student Learning Inventory for Economics Based on the Students' Experience of Learning: A Preliminary Study

The authors present the initial development of a student learning inventory (SLI) that is specific to economics. This approach, which is based on the student experience of learning (SEL) literature, emphasizes aspects of prior knowledge in the learning history of entering first-year students. Preliminary insights from a first SLI suggest that on entry to university, students show considerable variation in their perceptions of what economics is and what economists do. From the SEL perspective, such variation affects student learning. It is argued that continued development of an economic-specific SLI may result in a better understanding of students' learning engagement with economics and ultimately assist instructors in better understanding student learning difficulties and increase student success in first-year economics.     

The Case of the Missing Organizations: Co-operatives and the Textbooks

The author discusses the following seven issues affecting assessment of undergraduates in universities: decisionmaking and the selection of tests, the use of written and oral assignments to measure learning, the characteristics of grades and portfolios for evaluating students, opportunities for self-assessment and feedback to instructors, retention of learning and the testing for higher-ordered thinking, the psychology of students in the economics classroom, and the development of new tests as public goods. The author suggests ways that economics faculty can add new dimensions to their assessment practices, improve their understanding of assessment choices, use assessment to enhance the quality of student thinking, and conduct research studies on assessment questions.     

Assessing the value of short-term study abroad programmes to students

For many universities, students participating in short-term faculty-led programmes make up a large portion of the total study abroad population. In this article, we report the results of a unique choice experiment in which 1255 students were asked about their personal characteristics and their preferences for study abroad programme attributes. Using a random parameters logistic regression model, we find that students attitudes towards risk, their experience with international travel and their beliefs about whether study abroad would help them professionally were major determinants of whether a student expressed interest in studying abroad. We also estimate students’ willingness to pay for various programme attributes, including destination, programme duration, course type and the number of experiential learning activities. We find that the highest value programmes give students credit towards their major rather than towards the university core or as an elective and that they are 3–4 weeks in length rather than 2 or 6 weeks. Also, while students value more experiential learning activities per week, each additional trip adds less value with no additional value beyond four activities. Results are useful for practitioners interested in maximizing student participation while effectively managing study abroad budgets.     

Leveraging the power of experiential learning to achieve higher-order proficiencies

Although experiential learning approaches, such as service-learning, have been shown to increase student motivation and academic achievement, faculty concerns about the costs of developing and implementing such courses have limited their adoption within economics. One cost that can be eliminated is the opportunity cost typically associated with “required” reflection exercises that are often perceived as taking time away from economic instruction. This article contributes to the existing literature by introducing a reflection mechanism based on programmatically appropriate project-management reports. This approach not only links experience and course content, essential elements of service-learning best-practice, but also facilitates the successful management of a complex project, thereby contributing to the development of higher-order proficiencies.     

Econometrics as a Capstone Course in Economics

The author describes an econometrics capstone course design at a large public university that offers economics degrees in both business (BBA) and liberal arts (BS). The goal of the capstone is to provide a research experience similar to those in the honors college but on the smaller scale of a one-semester course. The revisions for converting an existing course to a capstone, the student activities adopted, and sample outcomes are addressed. The hurdles overcome within the respective colleges in order to create a capstone course are discussed. Summaries of several student projects as well as publication of faculty-mentored student research papers illustrate the viability of econometrics as a capstone course for institutions unable to establish a stand-alone research course for that purpose.     

The Relative Effectiveness of Three Methods of Teaching Principles of Economics

Research on the impact of learning style preferences is very rare in economic education. This article reports the results of a project in which the student's preferred learning style and the instructor's teaching style were included as variables in a regression model. Those favoring independent styles achieved significantly more than students favoring dependent styles. Changes in student attitudes towards economics were also taken into account. The researchers assert that the addition of these variables also “greatly increases the power of the model to explain variation in student achievement and attitudes concerning economics.”     

The Overconfident Principles of Economics Student: An Examination of a Metacognitive Skill

Students in a large principles of macroeconomics class were asked to predict their performance on a regularly scheduled midterm examination. The author collected and analyzed data to examine the effect of various demographic characteristics, academic endowments, course preparation, and course performance variables on the accuracy of pretest expectations. A two-equation recursive model was estimated by the author to determine which factors influenced the accuracy of student expectations (predictive calibration). The results indicated that a pervasive degree of overconfidence existed within the sample. Although age and overall academic performance were found to temper overconfidence, students with credit in a previous economics course had a greater probability of reporting overconfident expectations. Overconfidence was found to be associated with lower degrees of predictive calibration. Misjudgments concerning the scope of the midterm were found to lower predictive calibration scores, ceteris paribus. These and other results indicate that unmet student performance expectations may be a root cause for the routinely observed student dissatisfaction within the traditional principles course.     

The Use of Narrative Interview in Teaching Principles of Macroeconomics

The author describes the design and implementation of one experiential learning assignment used in a principles of macroeconomics course. The learning exercise provides an active role for students and results in a relational experience that provides traditional undergraduate students with a frame of reference with which to interpret the impact of macroeconomic events and policy on their daily lives.     

Promoting Active-Student Learning Using the World Wide Web in Economics Courses

During the past 10 years, teaching with computer technology, such as e-mail and the Web, has become customary throughout undergraduate economic education. The authors review the literature on the implications for student learning, present specific educational activities that use a number of different computer technologies, and discuss growing problems, such as "cyber-plagiarism," along with suggesting potential solutions. The future of using technology for teaching economics will be the continuation of recent trends: increased portability in the access to instruction and increased opportunities for interaction, including students' interaction with the material and with the instructor and other students.     

Trends in Undergraduate Economics Degrees: An Update

The author examines the effects of different introductory microeconomics textbooks on student performance in subsequent economics courses (specifically, Intermediate Microeconomics I and Money and Banking). In some cases, the effects are significant and sizeable. There is also evidence of other variables affecting student performance in later courses, such as taking first-year microeconomics by distance, math background, effects of having taken other economics courses, and the time between introductory economics and later courses.     

The Principles of Economics Course: A Historical Perspective

The author's research provides an amusing and thoughtful account of what has happened to the teaching of the beginning course in economics over the past century and should cause the profession to reflect upon what is known for sure about the relative effectiveness of various methods of presenting the subject to students. As one example, what is the role of close personal contact between teacher and student (as indicated by class size) in providing a favorable environment for learning the art and/or the science of economics?     

Communications

The University of California, Berkeley sends more undergraduate students to economics PhD programs than any other public university. While this fact is surely a function of its size, there may be lessons from the Berkeley experience that others could adopt. To investigate why Berkeley generates so many economics PhD students, the author convened and interviewed two groups: economics student services staff and a self-selected focus group of twelve economics undergraduates who plan to apply to PhD programs. Four factors came up repeatedly in these conversations: math preparation, advanced track for theory courses, research opportunities, and availability of information. A fifth factor was implicit in the conversations: peer effects.     

An Evaluation of the Vanderbilt-JCEE Experimental PSI Course in Elementary Economics

This is considerably longer than articles normally accepted by the JEE, but we considered it to be an important follow-up of our Special Issue No. 2, “The Vanderbilt-JCEE Experimental Course in Elementary Economics.” (Winter 1974.) The authors address a number of aspects of PSI, some of which have rarely been touched upon by other researchers interested in this method. This paper deals not only with student learning and student reactions to PSI, but with its effects on performance in higher level economics courses, its impact on the student proctors in terms of their learning of economics, and the costs of establishing and maintaining a PSI course. Siegfried and Strand have not answered all the questions pertaining to self-paced instruction but, along with Allison, Billings, Fels, Soper, Spector, Tietenberg and others, they have contributed significantly to our knowledge of the effectiveness of PSI.     

Some Evidence on the Value of Instructors in Teaching Economic Principles

Using data collected from three universities, the authors of this article attempt to show that student attitude is “an important dimension of learning” and that the quality of instruction is indeed associated with attitude. The attitude referred to here is that of student opinions toward economics (as measured by Karstensson's “Questionnaire on Student Attitude Toward Economics”) rather than opinions on economic issues. Posttest scores on the TUCE and the attitude instrument were the dependent variables, while scores on the TUCE pretest, ACT scores, sex, major field, economics background, university attended, and quality of instruction were used as independent variables.     

Developing and Implementing an Internet-Based Financial System Simulation Game

Thanks to the Internet and server-side technology such as Active Server Pages (ASP), faculty can develop, implement, and share interactive pedagogy easily and inexpensively. The Financial System Simulator (FSS) is an example of an interactive game that the author has developed. The FSS is an Internet-based, interactive teaching aid that introduces undergraduate students to the domestic and international consequences of monetary policy. Although simulators are common among computer-aided interactive learning devices in today's undergraduate economics curricula, the FSS is different from the others because it allows students, who represent nations, to interact with each other rather than with a computer. The exercise provides users with real-time outcomes based on their decisions, as well as the decisions of other students. According to student surveys, the game helped students understand monetary policy and kept students motivated and interested.     

Expected Proficiencies for Undergraduate Economics Majors

The case for adopting a proficiencies approach to instruction and learning in the economics major is reiterated. This approach focuses on what graduating majors should be able to do with the knowledge and skills they acquire in the major, that is, their ability to demonstrate their learning in practical ways. The author's list of five proficiencies, advanced in the mid-1980s, is reviewed and revised; one additional proficiency is added and several others are refined. The author discusses the emphasis given to these proficiencies with top economics undergraduates at two major research universities, the author's experience with incorporating these proficiencies into his instruction, and the challenge of assessing the ability of economics majors to demonstrate these proficiencies.     

Writing in the discipline and reproducible methods: A process-oriented approach to teaching empirical undergraduate economics research

The authors of this article describe an empirical research project as a component of an upper-level undergraduate economics writing-in-the-discipline course, thus aiming to reduce the high fixed costs associated with designing an empirical research project assignment and encourage more undergraduate economics research. This project is central to the course structure and has a dual-purpose: to teach students economics writing conventions and reproducible empirical research methods. The authors present a sequenced project design and replication documentation protocol and posit that this promotes student learning and leads to improvements in organization and coherence throughout the entire research and writing process. As an essential element of the course, students learn to do econometrics through effective writing, data management, and empirical analysis.     

Public Scholarship and Economics: Engaging Students in the Democratic Process

Public scholarship is an emerging pedagogical practice that integrates teaching, research, and service in ways that expand student learning by tackling critical, topical problems and generating real solutions. This paper describes the use of a course on women and the economy in two widely disparate institutions to demonstrate the process of integrating public scholarship in economics.